Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Mining the OSR for GURPS

So last night was a last game with Rusty for a while. Our party managed to find the important things. Though the adventure was built for six to eight players and three of them being fighter we did okay with four of us, with one NPC fighter who got beat up pretty bad by a ghoul. I won't go into much detail as not to spoil the plot for the beginning of the Splinters of Faith series, but be prepared for a lot of round rooms.

The group discussed what we wanted to do next. Everyone seems to have d20 fatigue so we are going back to GURPS. I think for our group its always been the system of choice, for better or worse it fits us. I will be GMing this time around which I am excited about. Wasn't sure if I would be, but the more we talked about it the more ideas that came to my head.

Now just because we are playing GURPS does not mean I am not going to mine the shit out of OSR products. Oh no, I plan on having a large pick-ax going to town. Plus, Rob runs another Swords & Wizardry game on the side so I might do a few pick-up games there so I can throw a d20.

While GURPS is a great system and has some of the best historical supplement books, the one thing it lacks, nah, I will even say sucks at is adventures and creatures. Though they are making head way in this area SJG isn't about to expend resources on an ehhh selling product right now when they are riding the baloney pony of Munchkin all the way to the bank. But with the Dungeon Fantasy series and recent release of Low Tech (which is interesting, but it makes me think too much) and Monster Hunters at least it doesn't feel abandon.

This week the guys will make their characters. Rob I think will be playing a city guard/mercenary spear man. Dwayne has not unveiled his guy yet. As a GM all I asked was they make the characters and figure out some back story on how they know each other and make them compatible. Two man adventuring party leaves little room for error.

I'll be using the Majestic Wilderlands as a setting. I always tell Rob that think of it as a alternate universe from his own. Since it was such quick notice it works out because of the history we have with it and there are several threads we can pick up on and get into depth without putting too much effort into it. All of us know the Majestic Wilderlands, cultures, politics and legends. So no need to feed the players information the only thing that needs monitoring sometimes is knowledge they would not know.

Back to the OSR connection, I plan on going through some adventures, supplements and blogs and getting some good information gathered I can use. Good gaming stuff doesn't have a system boundary, it'll work anywhere.

GURPS? I am in the process of rolling a bunch of my GURPS material into my blog over the coming months. I plan on starting today or tomorrow. There's going to be a ton of NPCs and monster conversions. I hope some of it is useful to you.

I also firmly believe if there is even a hint of powergamer in any of the players, the GM must know the system MUCH better than the players. Potential for much abuse in this system, and some of it is so stealthy that an underexperienced GM can be caught off guard.